Captain Peggie

Front matter

* A % S A ,o

aN t 0 N C , I'o ' * * ' q?

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Contents

CHAPTER p AGE

I. The New Captain. 1

II. Enter Louise.15

Chapter I

It was a rather damp, drizzling afternoon in mid- September. Three mud-splashed motor-buses from the station—piled outside with handbags and hockey sticks, and filled inside to overflowing with an assortment of what is generally termed the “fair sex”—had steered with many hootings between a pair of great iron gates, and had drawn up on a gravel sweep in front of a large building. There, with what speed they might, they were unloading cargo. A passing stranger, watching the event, might have been instantly reassured on one point: this was certainly not an Institution for the Deaf and Dumb! On the contrary, the arrival recalled the cheerful chatter of swallows in migration, the flutter of linnets in a field of thistle-down, the buzz of bees about to swarm, or any other of the sounds and signals by which Mother Nature marks an exodus. At a dis¬ tance the undulating rise and fall of voices was like waves breaking on a seashore, but at close quarters they resolved themselves into speech.

“Connie! Hello, old sport! Why didn’t you come in our bus?”

“Tried, but you were full up, and you slammed the door on me yourself!”

“Esme! That’s never you? Why, you’ve bobbed your hair!”

“Look at Susie with a pigtail!”

“Winnie says she’s left her bag in the train!”

“Rubbish! I took it out myself!”

“Well, she can’t find it anyhow.”

“It’s there, for I saw it.”

“Did you have jolly hols?”

“Absolutely ripping, thanks.”

“I’ve broken my thermos flask, and it’s soaked every¬ thing in my bag.”

“Oh, poor you!”

“Did you have tea on the train? Wasn’t the cake horrid ?”

“I never risked it. I stuck to the raspberry jam.”

“I nearly missed you all at the junction. I’d got into a wrong carriage.”

“Well, you’re here now, at any rate.”

“Isn’t Esme a scream?”

“Oh, you haven’t seen Flossie yet!”

“Girls! Girls! Silence!” interrupted a strong dig¬ nified voice. “Register yourselves at the office, take your handbags and go to your own houses. In order now! Seniors first. No pushing. Middle school wait over there. Juniors this way.”

At the note of authority the chattering subsided from storm to calm. One by one the brown-clad damsels gave in their names to a teacher armed with a long alphabetical list of pupils, and were duly checked off; one by one they claimed their handbags, then in little groups they started off from the central buildings across the gardens or over the playing fields to their respective hostels.

It was the first day of the autumn term of a new school year, but Peggie Paget, with whose fortunes this book is particularly concerned, was no newcomer to Somerton Park. She had already spent three years in her hostel, and a previous year in the Preparatory Department, and was very much at home indeed in all the inner workings of the college. She was a neatly made, alert-looking girl of fifteen, with a nice straight little nose, a self-controlled mouth, a pretty complexion, light blue eyes, and plentiful hair of a shade that might best be described as flaxen turning into brown. She put up her umbrella as she walked along the dripping avenue, sheltering herself and a companion from a shower bath of rain and falling rose petals.

“Too bad to baptize us just as we arrive!” she laughed. “Come closer, Connie, I can’t cover your hat! Those two behind must take care of themselves. Where’s Maisie ? I haven’t seen her yet. Is that Annie Hall in front, walking with Kathleen? It looks like her twenty-miles-to-the-gallon stride.”

“If it’s Annie, she must be the daughter of Mephistopheles, who is supposed to be the father of all fibs,” replied Connie curtly. “I’d a letter from the girl only last week, bidding a tearful good-bye before she started for Japan or Honolulu or somewhere. She oughtn’t to work on my feelings for nothing. They’re delicate and won’t bear the strain. I shall have to talk to her about it, I really shall.”

“No need to excite yourself; it’s Doreen Webster. It was my mistake. But look here, is Annie really and truly gone? Rather sudden, isn’t it? We all thought she was going to be captain this year.”

“So she would have been, only her father has ac¬ cepted a professorship out east and taken the whole family with him. It leaves a vacancy at Bronte.”

“It does indeed. Why, Annie seemed the absolute ‘heir apparent’. It will be Maisie now, I suppose— she was always ‘second best’, wasn’t she? Good old Maisie! She’s rather a sport on the whole.”

“No it will not be Maisie! Her cough’s worse, and the doctor has sounded her chest and ordered her to Switzerland for the winter. I tell you, candidates are falling away like the ten little nigger boys. There’s nobody left for a captain except Helen Armstrong.”

“Helen Armstrong! But why should she be chosen ?”

“Because she’s the sixth Armstrong at Somerton, and the five others have all been captains. Miss Penrose thinks the world of them. And General Armstrong’s name comes first in the reference at the end of the school prospectus, with a star to show he’s ‘parent of present pupil’.”

“Partly because it begins with A,” said Peggie, puckering up her forehead, “and the list of course is alphabetical. I can’t see that that?s any reason for making Helen a captain.”

“Reason or no, she’s the best sporting chance of any of us in my opinion. Be careful, Pegs! You’re poking the umbrella in my eye! Here we are at Bronte at last, thank goodness. What a wet afternoon to arrive! I want some more tea. What I had on the train wasn’t nice. O hooray, I see the urn! (Good old Shepherd¬ ess!) I positively shan’t be more than three seconds in changing my shoes and my mackintosh. If you’re not ready, Pegs, by then, I shan’t wait for you.”

The house into which the two girls ran was a long, old-fashioned building with a new wing added at either end. The middle part was quaint and timbered, in sixteenth century fashion, with black beams and stone balls and copings, and the modern portion had followed the same style of architecture in cheaper materials and with less picturesque results. Bronte, as it was now called, had the distinction of being the old original dwelling on the estate of Somerton Park, and though some of the other hostels might be more convenient, its members prided themselves obstinately upon being in residence at “the Manor”. It was the farthest off from the school buildings, and the nearest to the wood and to the farm, and its garden had a clipped yew hedge, and altogether in their estimation it held many advantages.

Somerton College lay only a few miles from the town of Baddesley Wells, but once you were within its great gates you could imagine yourself in the depths of the country. There were playing fields, and grass lands and a home farm, and a patch of common with gorse and bracken, and a little pine wood, and a spinney with a small stream running through it, and there was a beautiful uninterrupted view of distant meadows and valley and hillside right up the Staplemere Gorge to Heatherley Castle.

The college itself consisted of a large group of school buildings, assembly hall, classrooms, cloak-rooms, gym¬ nasium, art studio, library, science room, and music rooms, together with the residence of the head mistress and of some of the more advanced students, and of certain members of the staff. There were nine different hostels in various portions of the grounds, each accom¬ modating about twenty-five girls. They were all named after famous women. “Austen”, “Mitford”, and “Eliot”, were for seniors over sixteen; “Bronte”, “Gaskell”, “Nightingale”, and “Caved” held the middle school; while “Alcott” and “Greenaway” were pre¬ paratory houses for juniors under twelve.

According to an old established tradition of the school each hostel had its own captain, whose position was somewhat similar to that of a head prefect. She was appointed annually, and was supposed to be responsible for the general welfare and success of her house. She took the chair at committees, organized entertainments, urged her comrades to obtain distinc¬ tions, and indeed acted as a mixture of shepherd and sheep dog, sometimes leading her flock and sometimes driving them by sheer force of “bark and bite”. The appointment of a captain lay in the hands of the house mistress, with the head mistress as referee, and was a decision of some importance, for on the type of girl who was chosen for the office would largely depend the tone of the hostel for the coming year. Naturally the matter meant much to those who were immediately concerned. The inmates of Bronte, drinking hot tea after their arrival in the rain, could discuss little else.

“Girls who’ve been ear-marked as captains oughtn’t to be allowed to leave the school,” remarked Enid Wilkinson. “It’s not playing the game. I should think Annie feels mean.”

“She says she’s cried quarts over it,” volunteered Connie Dawson. “I meant to bring her letter to read to you all but I forgot, I’m sure she said ‘quarts’.”

“It doesn’t matter if she said gallons or hogsheads or butts. Blubbing won’t bring her back! I can forgive Maisie, she can’t help being ill, but Annie might have wangled her father and stayed if she’d liked. She’s let us down!”

“Left us in the lurch!” agreed Lilian Osborne, taking another piece of currant bread.

“What we ought to do is to put an advertisement in the school magazine,” said Dorothy Carter. “Some¬ thing like this would do:

“Wanted, strong and efficient Captain to supply un¬ expected vacancy in very eminent house. Will be required to win distinctions. Broad brow for wearing laurels essen¬ tial, also expanse of chest to accommodate medals. Must be able to write a play with at least twenty-five leading characters in it, and must be an impartial allotter of cos¬ tumes. One deaf ear and one blind eye might be con¬ sidered advantages. Length of leg may depend on measure¬ ments of hockey stick, but stride must be guaranteed at never less than fifty thousand hop scotches to a square mile.”

“Don’t try to be funny, Dorothy!” yawned Helen

Armstrong. “I’m tired, and the effort to laugh makes my back ache.”

“Poor tenderfoot.”

“Besides, when all’s said and done it isn’t we who choose the captain, it’s Miss Croft.”

“What a remarkable discovery! Thank you for men¬ tioning it! How clever of you! We none of us had the slightest idea of such a thing. Had we?”

“Oh come! If you’re ‘sarky’ I give you up!”

“Give me up to what? Haven’t you finished tea yet? I’m going to settle my cubicle, and if I find any of your things on my bed I shall fling them on to the floor—so look out! Ta ta!”

“I haven’t unpacked so much as a tooth-brush, so you needn’t worry,” returned Helen smartly.

“Waiting for the captain’s room, I suppose!” was Dorothy’s parting shot as she ran upstairs.

Helen did not as a rule take her companion’s jokes* seriously, but she flushed with annoyance at this in¬ sinuation, gulped the remainder of her cup of tea, fol¬ lowed Dorothy to Dormitory 3, and began to spread forth her possessions. In the corner cubicle Peggie was already arranging her hair for supper. All pupils at Somerton College were required to bring first-night necessaries in handbags which they carried themselves, leaving the vast piles of luggage to be distributed at the leisure of the school janitor. Often the girls did not get their belongings till the next morning, but this time they were more fortunate. Already two of the gardeners, with well wiped boots, were carrying boxes upstairs. The voice of Miss Sheppard, the hostel matron, could be heard giving directions on the landing.

‘‘This way, please! What name on the label? Arm¬ strong ? Take it to No. 3. The other ? Oh, that goes into the little room over the porch!”

Now the small single dormitory at the head of the stairs was the special domain of the hostel captain, and the sound of luggage being conveyed there was sufficient to rouse thrills in the breasts of many maidens. Miss Sheppard, peeping hurriedly into No. 3, ignored several eager, interested faces, and beckoned to Peggie Paget.

“Miss Croft wants you,” she said. “Go to her at once. She’s in the study now, so don’t keep her wait¬ ing.”

A most astonished Peggie gave a final comb to her hair, fixed in a slide, and fluttered from the room.

“Salaam, O Queen!” said Dorothy Carter, with a mock bow as she passed her cubicle.

“Salaam!” echoed Connie, laughingly. But Helen Armstrong turned her back and concentrated the whole of her attention upon the key of her box.

Miss Croft’s study was a sitting-room bedroom at the end of the first landing. It was reminiscent of her Girton days. The bed resembled a divan, and was spread with a gorgeous eastern cover, the wardrobe looked like a bookcase, the walls held photographs of hockey teams, and there were pretty ornaments and vases of flowers. Miss Croft herself, still young and very modern, sat at a small bureau, clicking at a type¬ writer. She motioned Peggy to a seat, finished her io Captain Peggie

paragraph, referred to a notebook, made an entry in a diary, then turned her chair round and began to talk.

“It’s a difficult matter to choose a captain for Bronte. We had counted on Annie or Maisie. It’s a task that needs many qualifications. A girl ought to be some¬ thing in herself, and a good leader, and possessed of tact; able to use authority without becoming dictatorial. I’ve thought it over very carefully, and in the end, Peggie, I’ve decided on you. It’s a big charge to give you, but I believe I can trust you, and that you won’t fail me.”

“Thank you, Miss Croft. I’ll try my best,” mur¬ mured Peggie, very red and embarrassed and nervous, and wishing she knew what she ought to say on such a momentous occasion.

“You’ve been four years at the school,” continued Miss Croft, “so you’re no novice at Somerton ways. And you know Bronte inside out. What we want this year is somebody to pull the house together. It isn’t quite what it ought to be. Other hostels carry away the distinctions, and leave us in the lurch. We need to make a great spurt and show we’re capable of big things. There was far too much slackness here the last year. It’s made a bad precedent. We ought to be able to win laurels and do heroic deeds for Bronte and raise her reputation in the school. The general tone has fallen low, and I shall look to you to lift it up again. You’ve no need to go about preaching, but you can use your influence in the right direction. It’s be¬ cause I think you’ll have this influence that I’ve chosen you. I’ve no need to explain your duties because

II you know them as well as I do—the great thing is to carry them out. You’ll find your box in the captain’s room, and you can take your bag there now and un¬ pack. I must finish this letter before the post goes.”

Miss Croft turned again to her typewriter and re¬ commenced clicking. She was experienced in the ways of girls, and she did not expect the new captain to make a speech or give any great protestations. She preferred to let her think matters over in quiet, so dismissed her with a nod, and—

“Shut the door, please! And stop that noise on the landing! Tell Miss Sheppard I shall be ready to see her in ten minutes, and that the post-bag is not to go without my letters.”

Peggie, after sending half a dozen gossiping damsels flying to their dormitories stepped briskly to take possession of her new domain. Ever since she had come from “Greenaway” to “Bronte” three years ago, the captain’s room had been the summit of her ambi¬ tion. The chance of ever attaining it had seemed so infinitely remote that it had been on a level with such day dreams as “If I were a princess”, or “If somebody left me a fortune”. To walk in and find her box there was like a fairy tale. The bag, and the brush and comb which she had left in Dormitory 3, were placed on the bed. So the girls knew. Miss Sheppard of course had told them. Were they pleased, or would they resent her elevation? What a buzz came from down the passage. Were they talking about her?

The little room over the porch was, with the excep¬ tion of Miss Croft’s and Miss Sheppard’s studies, the only single one at Bronte. It had a wall-paper with a pattern of wild roses, and the furniture was enamelled pink. There was a small table and a basket arm-chair with pink cushions. A water-color sketch of the wood, done by a former captain, hung in a frame over the mantelpiece. Peggie unlocked her box and began to unpack her clothes and place them in the drawers. She did this automatically, for her whirling thoughts were elsewhere. She! Peggie Paget to be Captain of Bronte. She was hardly yet used to the idea. Captain Peggie! How extraordinary is sounded. What an utter idiot she had been when Miss Croft spoke to her. Never a word in reply except mumbled thanks. There was a big programme before her for the school year. Nobody knew better than herself that Bronte had fallen into a Slough of Despond. To raise it would indeed be a task needing energy.

“I must set myself certain things,” resolved Peggie. “I must do something athletic and something clever, and something heroic. Body, brain, and soul, as Miss Penrose would say. I’ll play up and win a hockey match, and I'll write a charade for the house to act at Christmas, and I’ll rescue someone from drowning or burning or from under a motor-car. Will that satisfy Miss Croft? It’s what she wants, I expect. To win distinctions for Bronte. It’s worth doing. She must have thought me a stupid owl to stand stammering there, going as red as a beetroot. But I'll show her before the term’s out that I’ve taken in what she told me. Hello! Time’s getting on! I must hurry with my unpacking, or I shall be late for supper, and that i3 would be a nice thing for the new captain. I shall be glad when this first evening is over— rather!”

To walk downstairs to the dining-room as if nothing had happened required courage. Dorothy, Connie, and a few of her friends greeted Peggie enthusiastically, but among others her arrival caused a dead hush. Manifestly the appointment was not popular in all quarters. Helen Armstrong averted her eyes. Enid Wilkinson indeed burst out into open mutiny.

“Really, Peggie Paget, why should you be chosen captain, I should like to know? If anybody has a right to be captain it’s Helen, and I can’t think what Miss Croft has been doing to overlook her! Who are you to be put over her head?”

“You’d better go and ask Miss Croft that!” an¬ swered Peggie steadily. “She’s made me captain, and here I am! I’m sorry if anyone else is disappointed, but it’s not my fault. I’ll do my best, and Bronte will have to put up with me.”

“Hear! hear!” agreed Dorothy. “We certainly can’t all be captains, and I call it very bad taste to grouse. Don’t be an idiot, Enid. Ask the Shepherdess to let you have Peggie’s vacant cubicle in No. 3, then you’ll be next to Helen, and as chummy as anything. We’ll have more fun in our dormitory than Pegs in her soli¬ tary room, I’ll bet. And as for Pegs, she must hold her own. I for one mean to stick up for her. We haven’t stood by our captains much at Bronte, and it’s been jolly well the worse for us. If the old house means to score anything at all this year it must take a lurch forward. Salaams to Captain Peggie, and may she win us some distinctions. Sh! sh! Here’s the Shepherdess! And Miss Croft behind her. Don’t let them know what we’ve been talking about. --Cheer up, Helen, for goodness’ sake! You look as if you were at a funeral. What’s for supper? Fish and macaroni and pancakes. Oh, decent! I had two teas, but I’m so hungry again I could eat my serviette. Pegs, I mean to sit next to our new captain. I booked the place half an hour ago, Connie, so it’s no use your trying to push yourself in. Sh! Sh! Can’t you see Miss Croft is just going to say grace?”

Chapter II

It was a week afterwards, a whole long week, and Peggie sat in her captain’s room. She had arranged it entirely to her satisfaction; her books stood in a row on the shelf above the fire-place, her writing materials were on the small bureau, a large vase of autumn leaves and late flowers decorated the mantelpiece, her time¬ table hung on the wall, and close at hand, ready for pinning up when desired, were several neatly printed mottoes, bearing such words as “Pm busy”, “Free at 2.30”, “Committee here at 7.45”, “Bronte before all!”, “The road to success is paved with hard work”. The hour between two o'clock and three was reserved for rest at Somerton Park. The girls did what they liked in it, they pottered about, and read, and pursued hobbies, or walked in the grounds. Peggie, on this particular afternoon, was leisurely sharpening a pencil and think¬ ing over a programme for the first monthly social even¬ ing. A peculiar rap-ta-ta-tat-tat at the door caused her to say “Come in!” She had a pre-arranged signal by which she could recognize the advent of certain chums, and guard herself from the unwanted. Dorothy Carter entered with a note addressed to “Miss Paget”.

“It's just been sent down by Miss Penrose,” she 15 explained. “It was enclosed in a letter for her this morning. Mabel Hopkins brought it, and said you were to have it at once. May I stay, old sport? Or must I take myself off?”

‘‘Stay, by all manner of means!” acceded Peggie, clearing some books from a chair to make room for her friend, and tearing open her envelope. She read the communication inside twice over, with a pucker on her forehead, then threw it down with a rather vexed little laugh.

“So Louise is coming after all! I never thought they’d really make up their minds. And I hoped Bronte would be too full! Jolly hard luck to be saddled with her just now; Fd rather some other captain had the benefit. However, if she’s coming she’s coming, and there’s an end of it.”

“Who’s Louise? And why these heroics, please?” inquired Dorothy, offering peppermint creams.

“Louise is my cousin. She’s lived most of her life in South Africa, and I never saw her before this summer. Her people are over from the Transvaal, and they decided to send her to school in England. They couldn’t make up their minds where, and when term time came they were still knee-deep in pro¬ spectuses, and flutering between athletics and aesthetics. This is what Aunt Lucy says:

“ We have at last arranged to place Louise at Somerton College, and find that most fortunately there is a vacancy at your house, so I feel much relieved, knowing you will take charge of her and show her all the ways of the place’.”

1 7

“That's the kind of thing parents do. They can’t manage Louise themselves, and they dump her on to me as if she were some timid little saint who’d hover in my orbit like a piece of thistledown.”

“She’s no saint, then?”

“Saint! Sinner more likely! She’s simply run wild in Africa, and I can tell you I don’t relish the task of helping to tame a lion-cub. So she’s coming this after¬ noon. Farewell to peace then! I thought I had enough worries already at Bronte, without adding any more. Louise! Great Scott! I shall have to ask Miss Sheppard for a tonic! I guarantee that cousin of mine would wear anybody’s nerves threadbare in a fortnight. Thank goodness there’s no room for another bed here, or I believe Aunt Lucy would have petitioned for us to have cubicles next to one another. Don’t laugh, Dorothy! You ought to sympathize!”

“So I do, but the idea of you and your lion-cub is rather funny. Can I fancy you in the character of Androcles? We shall have to present you with a dogchain ! No. 3 is full so she can’t room with us. I ex¬ pect No. 5 will get the benefit of her. Is she a kid, by the way, or ‘upper middle’?”

“Just thirteen, grown-up in some ways, and very babyish in others. But you’ll see for yourself quite soon enough, and then perhaps you’ll wish you hadn’t. Oh look here! This business has upset me. I can’t go on with my programme. Let’s have a run round the common and into the wood. There’s plenty of time before afternoon school.”

The new-comer was not present at tea, and though later Peggie’s sharp ears caught the thump of a box on the stairs, and other familiar sounds of arrival, there was no disturbance of the hour and a half sacred to preparation and to practising. It was not till after seven o’clock, when the girls had changed for supper, that the colonial cousin walked into the dining-hall at Bronte.

Ring the curtain up for Louise! Turn on the foot¬ lights and let her make her bow to the audience. She was not the kind of girl to slink unnoticed into any room. She entered with all the empressement of one accustomed to play a leading part. She was well grown for her age, with the same pretty complexion and straight little nose as Peggie, to whom she bore rather a superficial family resemblance, but her eyes were light brown, flecked with darker specks—the type of eyes which to a physiognomist invariably betokens a quick temper—and her hair was a tawny chestnut color, rather wavy and unruly, with a bleached look, as if she had worn no hat throughout the summer. She marched confidently to her cousin, and greeted her with a grin.

“I’ve turned up here after all, you see! It was a toss up between Eastbourne and Scotland. Mums wanted one and Dad the other, so I settled it for them by saying I wouldn’t go to either, and then they both plumped for you. I’ve had a fearful time getting ofiF. Is it true you’re captain of this shanty? What fun! If you’re wanting a lieutenant let me know. Have you all these hulking girls to look after? Sh! Sh! Why should I—Sh ? I don’t in the least mind anybody hear¬ ing what I say!”

“Say what you like afterwards, Lulu, but do please be careful now,” whispered Peggie. “I’ll go upstairs when supper’s over, and help you to unpack, and then we can talk. If you’d like to sit next to me at the table to-night I’m sure Dorothy would change just for once. I’ll ask her.”

“Give up my place to your lion-cub? Certainly, Sister Androcles!” laughed Dorothy demurely, “on the distinct understanding that it’s not to happen again. You must cut its claws before to-morrow, and put it among the kittens, or buy a cage for it and keep it in the menagerie. It doesn’t look as if it altogether fits in Bronte yet, though it’s not a bad specimen—of its kind.”

Mercifully for Peggie her young relation seemed slightly overawed during supper by the presence of Miss Croft and Miss Sheppard, and refrained alto¬ gether from conversation, though her wide-awake brown eyes evidently took in full details of her sur¬ roundings. When the meal was finished and the cousins had retired to Dormitory 5, Louise burst forth into questions.

“Who’s that girl who sat opposite to me? Maggie Fowler! She made me think of a prawn in spectacles, she’s such an overboiled look, and her eyes goggle. And the one with the high bumpy forehead ? Mary Everett! She looks 'plain Mary’. The one on the far side of her is the sort of girl who’d call her father Papa! I shall like a few of them, and I shall loathe the rest. Now don’t screw up your mouth, Peggie! It’s so like Miss

Greene, my governess in Africa, and she wasn't pretty. I always say exactly what I think about people."

“You can say anything you like to me, in private, but you’ll get yourself into tremendous trouble if you begin giving free opinions about girls, so remember I’ve warned you. They’ll simply call it ‘showing off’ and ‘cheek’. I thought you’d too much sense, Lulu."

Louise felt in her box, took out a packet of open hem pocket handkerchiefs, and with a corner of the top one removed an imaginary tear.

“I guess we’d better go on with my unpacking!" she said, skillfully changing the subject.

Peggie was already opening drawers and wardrobe to receive the contents of the trunk, but stopped in amazement at the armful of garments which her cousin was throwing on to the bed.

“Why, Lulu! What have you got here ? Navy blue dress, and blue and white flannel blazer! White Japsilk blouses! Black velour hat. Heavens, child! Don’t you know we wear nothing but brown serge and tussore here? Where was your list? The whole lot’s wrong!"